“Contractor Balfour Beatty Construction and the center’s managers have blamed each other, and now the parties have signed a settlement agreement to avoid legal claims that would likely top $25 million. The agreement settles the dispute by paying Balfour Beatty another $9.5 million.”
Tag: 10.17.14
The Medium Is Still The Message, Even After 50 Years
“Fifty years ago, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Assessing all media that came before television and predicting all that would come after, he argued that we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” Yet, after half a century, lots of folks who spout the aphorism still know nothing of his work. (audio)
Architect Michael Graves Has Forgiven His Mother For Telling Him He’d Be A Starving Artist
“The books I look at again and again are: my collection on Camille Corot. He can make a sketch that just makes you gasp. What he would do is go out to the site with a piece of cardboard—something stiff, not canvas—and paint a little oil sketch on it, and then take it back to the studio and create a larger painting based off that. He would, as I always say, correct the landscape.”
Living The Dream: Locked In A Bookstore In London (But Tweeting For Help)
“Web developer Tim Archer said: ‘@DWill_ @Waterstones tell them you’ll be randomly moving the books until you are released, that should speed them up a bit.'”
Apparently, Actors Aren’t ‘Workers’ And Thus Don’t Deserve Minimum Wage
“The appeal found that the original tribunal had failed to consider whether or not the actors were in fact self-employed professionals, rather than workers, and therefore not entitled to the minimum wage.”
Sometimes, Adults Read And Enjoy Young Adult Books, And That’s Just Fine
“The books and conversation also serve as a continuation of my education. Not only do I feel an intense connection with my earlier, often more vulnerable and intensely curious self, I also feel that I’ve been given access to a pure form of the complications involved with being young, now filtered through the compassion, perceptions (and barnacles) of my older self.”
How Do You Build A Beer Pipeline Under A Medieval World Heritage Site?
“Even under roads and public parks, there are centuries-old historic sites to avoid. There are more practical obstacles, too, like canals, major traffic crossings, and sites where things like underground garages will be built in the future. … Then there’s the chance the drilling process will stumble across something like the ruins of an unknown ancient castle.”
Keeping The Peking Opera Alive, On Long Island
“More than 200 Peking Opera performers, musicians and artisans live in the New York metropolitan area, according to officials at several local cultural organizations. Like Mr. Fang, the vast majority trained and performed in China. And also like him, they now labor in virtual anonymity—many in nail salons.”
Streaming Is Destroying Everything Good About Music – And Dating
“Now that we all share the same record collection, music snobs have no means to recognize one another. We cannot flip through a binder of CDs and see a new friend, a potential date. By making it perfectly easy to find new music, we’ve made it a little more difficult to find new people.”
Should We Turn To Science Fiction To Spur Science Innovation?
“As Neal Stephenson puts it, science fiction ‘supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place,’ producing icons that serve as ‘hieroglyphs — simple, recognizable symbols on which everyone agrees.'”